Do cancer patients ever receive placebos (inactive medicines) in a clinical trial?
Cancer patients in a clinical trial always receive the best standard treatment available or a new treatment that researchers believe is as good or better. A placebo is a substance that looks like medicine, but is not. Cancer patients are given placebos in a randomized trial only under unusual circumstances. If a placebo is used, researchers may give patients in the control group a placebo in combination with standard treatment to compare standard treatment alone to standard treatment with a new drug.
